Category: strategy

It really is all about attention

If brand building is all about setting up relatable, repeatable patterns that communicate value and relevance, advertising is about breaking all the rules (with authenticity).

I promise it’s not as dry as it sounds, but the key here is expectation violation theory. It’s what happens when you consciously become aware of something, in short, it’s what you notice.

In general, “expectation violations” are defined as events that are incompatible with one’s situation-specific prediction and that should contribute to a change in expectations.

Frontiers Scientific Platform
Expectation violation is what you notice

Every send, our brains receive, interpret and filter huge amounts of information. And, on a very simple level, deem it to be useful or useless. And if it’s useful, it alerts our conscious brain to that particular piece of data.

Expectations and reality

We walk around with certain expectations of how the world around us behaves. That’s how we know that stepping off a really high cliff, or into a really busy road is a bad idea. We don’t have to have experienced it ourselves, or even witnessed someone else doing it.

We’re constantly filling in the gaps. Taking what we know about how things, in our experience, ought to work… and making up the rest! Did you know each of your eyes has a blind spot where your optic nerve attaches to the retina? Here are some fun tests you can do to find your blind spots! When I get a migraine, my brain stops filling in the gaps, and the blind spots become more and more obvious. Strange!

The philosopher Daniel Dennet says that our brains are in essence anticipation machines – that a fundamental aspect of cognition is the necessity of forming expectations, based on direct or indirect experience, for how things are in the world

Faris

So when we’re just going about our business, interpreting all this data, happily filling in all the gaps, and correctly predicting what’s about to happen in our little bubble of a world. We don’t really notice anything. Ever have the feeling of arriving at your destination and having no recollection of how you got there? Not a single expectation was violated. Well done brain, you did it!

When something does violate those little old expectations you can have a positive or negative reaction (that’s called the violation valance, in case you’re interested).

The evaluation of the violation is based upon the relationship between the particular behavior and the valence of the actor.

Wikipedia

Humour and comedy often rely on eliciting a positive valance to an expectation violation. The old set up and punchline is exactly this. The set-up creates the expectation, the punchline violates it, and you (hopefully) have a positive valance – you laugh.

Postal service jokes don’t need much setup

It’s all in the delivery

It’s also the reason that people are right when they say you should under promise and over deliver. When you under promise, you lower expectations, and therefore you elicit a positive valence when you violate that expectation by doing better than expected. Rather than just telling them what you’re going to do, and doing it.

In our System 1 brain (the part that does most of the day to day thinking, and is very instinctual) this is when they wake up the more cognitive System 2 brain to help them out and de-code the message.

Expectation violation and advertising

So what does that all mean for your next advert?

We all know the old AIDA model (attention, interest, decision, action), so something similar. Well, you first need to catch someone’s attention before you can knuckle down to telling them about the awesome benefits of your latest widget.

And this is most effectively done through violating expectations, particularly those around people, and cultural or societal norms. The book Unlocking profitable growth (again, not as dry as it sounds) reccomends a balance of 80% familiarity, with 20% new or innovation.

We have so many demands on our mental processing, that we don’t respond well when our “cognitive load” is stretched. So for advertisers, that means priming our ad to the gills with the familiar (our distinctive assets, our cultural associations, familiar words, images and sounds – things that reinforce our image of the world), and then dropping that attention-grabbing, novelty or innovative moment in.

Innovation wrapped in a cloak of familiarity

For me, one of the adverts that does this best is Always #LikeAGirl campaign. The set-up has a sense of familiarity. It’s playing back to us a truth about the world we live in.

And then it drops a new idea.

That Like A Girl is not an insult. That girls are strong. And brave. And sporty. That with our stereotypes and slurs, we’re harming the girls of the world. Harming people we love.

In the works of Unlocking profitable growth; it is a kernel of novelty combined with extreme familiarity, which is one of their successful advertising combinations.

How can you use expectation violation theory to help improves the effectiveness of your marketing efforts? What brands do you think do this really well?

Be brave.

Feel stupid.

The power of patterns

The brain is a pattern-mad supposing machine.

Diane Ackerman, NY Times

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how brands actually work. What actually are they? And how to they actually make money? And how do we design and build them successfully?

I know, I know, an awful lot has been written about this. I’m not trying to come up with the answer myself here, I’m just trying to consume media that will help me gain a better understanding of these questions, and apply them to the brands that I work on. To make informed decisions and advise clients.

And, well, I’ve gone down a bit of a pattern matching rabbit hole. Care to join me?

The history of human pattern matching

So, there’s no revelation in saying that pattern matching was life and death back when we were being hunted by sabre tooth tigers and other deadly prey. Our brains are belief engines: as we go around in the world spotting patterns we create narratives and beliefs around them. That swish of grass is the wind, and that swish of grass is an animal stalking us.

An example given by Ackerman is that being able to recognise a single lion, only helps you be prepared for that very same lion. Whereas pattern matching helps you prepare for other similar lions, and build a network of patterns that help you prepare for other predators.

We are the ancestors of those most successful at finding patterns.

Michael Shermer, Scientific American

And our ability to predict and understand patterns comes from our powerful imagination, which has the ability to fill in the banks: “Given just a little stimuli, it divines the probable. When information abounds, it recognizes familiar patterns and acts with conviction. If there’s not much for the senses to report, the brain imagines the rest.”

This incredible feature of the human brain meant that we could dry run or test the outcomes of likely scenarios without having to put ourselves in any danger. We simply imagine what might happen if we run off the edge of that cliff based on what we know about jumping, falling, what happens when there’s no earth beneath our feet, painful falls, what we’ve seen happen to other people who jump or fall, or other objects the go over the edge of that cliff, and so on. Without actually having to find out in real life.

And that’s what Ackerman meant when she said the brain is a “pattern-mad supposing machine”. Connect the dots, and fill in the “what ifs”.

As a note of caution, all of the studies I’ve read on this subject agree that this leads to us, well, jumping to conclusions. Shermer calls this patternicity – “the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise”. Some authors talk of how this leads us to continue to gamble on a losing streak; some authors talk of how this leads us to believe conspiracy theories or miracles.

This feels a little contradictory – yes we’re amazing pattern matchers, but we often get it wrong. Shermer puts this juxtaposition down to the fact that from an evolutionary perspective, we only needed to see patterns that stopped us from dying. If we go back to wind in the grass example, if we saw several patterns of movement in the grass as predators, but a couple of them were actually just the wind – never mind, we still live. But if we saw one pattern movement in the grass as wind, that was actually a predator – game over. No learning experience here.

But if we didn’t let imagination fill in the blanks, we’d be unable to survive all the novel predicaments and landscapes we encounter.

Diane Ackerman, NY Times

So, we’ve evolved over thousands of years to be the very best of the best at spotting and understanding patterns. Most of the time.

How does pattern matching help us now?

The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning by Cambridge neuroscientist Daniel Bor states that “our penchant for pattern-recognition is essential to consciousness and our entire experience of life”, and that “our capacity for pattern-recognition is the very source of human creativity”.

According to a study by Ohio State University, detecting patterns is a big part of how we make decisions, we detect patterns in our environment all the time to help make decisions quicker and easier. We combine our pattern searching with probabilistic learning – how likely something is to happen. “It isn’t just about predicting what is coming next. It is looking for rules to help predict better and faster“.

The bit that fascinates me is that if your brain expects something to happen, it makes that information (and other related information) quicker and easier to access.

The neocortex is not just recognizing the world. It is always attempting to predict what will happen next, moment by moment. If it expects something strongly enough, the recognition threshold may be so low that it fires even when the full pattern is not present.

Tiago Forte

John Kaufman, author of one of my favourite business books the Personal MBA, refers to pattern matching as “one of the foundational capabilities of our mind and how it works”. Kaufman says that we optimise our brains to search out and store new patterns, and the more patterns we can recall, the better problem solvers we are.

When we go into a supermarket, we’re confronted with roughly 40,000 items, and we can go in and buy a few of them in a few minutes.

Byron Sharp, Hacking the Unconscious episode six

This is pattern matching as a shortcut, a decision making tool. A way of interpreting the ever more complex world around us. It’s how we filter the useless from the useful.

How does understanding pattern matching help build successful brands?

Understanding how we interpret patterns in the world around us unlocks key information on how we use brands as decision making shortcuts.

Let’s jump to a bit of Binet just here. The relevant part of Binet’s How advertising works is the make brands easy to think of.

Les Binet

Pattern pleases us, rewards a mind seduced and yet exhausted by complexity. We crave pattern, and find it all around us, in petals, sand dunes, pine cones, contrails. Our buildings, our symphonies, our clothing, our societies — all declare patterns. Even our actions: habits, rules, codes of honor, sports, traditions — we have many names for patterns of conduct. They reassure us that life is orderly.

Diane Ackerman, NY Times

So, what does that mean for us in the world of building brands?

Our brains are in love with searching out patterns. We love it when our expectation of what’s about to happen… happens.

So for brand strategists, designers, managers, the conclusion is quite clear. Help consumers use brands as decision making shortcuts:

  • Set a clear expectation of what the brand is/stands for.
  • Create distinctive brand assets that communicate the brand.
  • Use them clearly, constantly and regularly.

As you’re going about your life over the next few days, have a think about what patterns you’re seeing; how that’s helping you filter; how that’s helping you make decisions. I’d be interested to hear your experiences and thoughts on the subject.

Also, if you’re in the world of branding and have consciously and successfully used pattern matching for a campaign or brand – I’d love to hear about that too!

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Strategy for beginners

Empathy marketing

Empathy marketing was always going to be a trend for 2020. The green shoots of this has been building for a few years, before I’d ever heard the words coronavirus or COVID-19. We had no idea what the new Roaring Twenties would bring us, and I’m sure very few would have expected a global pandemic leading to global lockdown. 

But here we are.

Do you remember when all you heard about was how entitled and self-obsessed millennials are? Well fortunately, over the past few years their image has done a total 360, and they are now viewed as much more collectivist than their individualist generational predecessors.

What was once seen as arrogance is now being viewed as an unwillingness to put up with that they see as wrong, unfair or unjust. One might call them principled. And not afraid to stand up for what they believe in.

This shift in perception, and a recognition that millennials now account for a third of the population, created a boom in brand purpose. A solid product and a “cool” brand was no longer enough. They needed to stand for something.

The phrase “experiences over possessions” is now a nearly cliched target audience insight, but it remains no less true, according to Experian, especially for the millennial population.

We’re in a landscape of increasing community values, we’ve all spent a year rallying behind Greta, we want to save the planet, mental health awareness is on the up and up. This all already paints a picture of a gentler, fairer society. And so naturally, brands must fall in line with this global cultural shift in order to stay relevant.

Marketing in 2020

So, enter stage left… 2020 and all that it has brought… so far.

After an initial total panic and meltdown, leading to mass stockpiling and shortages of essential items, supermarkets had to enforce limitations on how many packets of certain items people could buy.

This display of selfishness and chaos was like the start of every apocalypse movie, leading to a widespread fear that this may actually be the end of days.

However, as the days and weeks rolled on, we was mass displays of love, kindness, support and community spirit. From the rainbows in windows, and weekly clapping for the NHS, to companies, crafters and individuals creating PPE supplies.

Vast amounts of content being live streamed, from PE classes to bake alongs to huge broadway musical hits.

Grassroots hubs sprouted across the country offering supplies and help to those who needed it, well before the Government suggested creating such a network. People were shielding the most vulnerable well before the Government decreed it so.

To the small acts of checking in on neighbours, people routinely signing off emails “Stay safe” instead of the usual “Kind regards”.

And brands are responding. They are now “here for us”. They are playing up heritage, community, their efforts for the greater good. People over profits. People first. Bringing people together. 

But how sustainable is that? And how true and authentic is that? How are brands going to build on these messages for years to come? And are they going to be able to put their money where their mouth is.

My sense is that we’re in a place where brands are totally over promising, and going to spend the next few years backpedaling. But perhaps that’s just the cynic in me.

What I see is people waking up to the power of companies. For the force for good that they can be, should they wish to. We’ve seen companies, huge companies, pivot their business in a matter of days. We’ve seen overhauls of complex systems to allow working from home. We’ve seen companies do the impossible, and the improbable. 

I think we’ll see consumers voting with their money. Making a stand. And not falling for the company line when questioned.

During the past month (how has it only been a month?!) we’ve seen a huge amount of advice and guidance on how brand should be navigating these choppy (and what feels like shark infested) waters. From celebrating their worked for carrying on working (safely), to jumping on the NHS-cheering bandwagon, to pivoting manufacturing to keep up supplies, to the “we’re here for you” cliche, and many, many more. 

My counsel to brands is now is the time to stop and take stock.

Stand and stare

In 1911 a poet from near my hometown in Gloucestershire wrote a poem warning that the hectic pace fo modern life has a detrimental effect on the human spirit.

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

W.H. Davies

More than a hundred years later, we are yet to heed this warning. I’m sure we’ve all felt the world hurtling forward; a societal Moore’s Law.

And now, today, the world has had the brake well and truly put on. So let’s all take advantage of this fact.

The question that has been running through my mind is: Will we come out of this collective experience as a more gentle and empathetic society, or will we inevitably spring back to the individualistic society that has been in a boom and bust cycle for over a century?

I may have given away my feelings on the subject in the phrasing of the question, but I would love for that not to be the case.

Empathetic endeavours

This goes broader than marketing and deeper than brands. This is about the importance that we put on people and planet.

Making money is all good and well, but at what cost?

So how can we create this Brave New World?

  1. More brave leaders. If you’re looking to lead a group of people, a company, a team, a Cub Scout pack; read Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead. These are the people that we want in charge. Be one of them.
  2. More brave brand leaders. Brené’s book is aimed at people, but the learnings for brands come through loud and clear.
    1. Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.
    2. Integrity is choosing courage over comfort.
    3. Clear is kind.
    4. Brené even provides a list of values.
  3. Vote with your wallet. Companies can’t make money if consumers won’t give it to them. Don’t agree with Dyson’s stance on Brexit? Pick a Shark next time. Feel sad about all the plastic in the ocean? Get your shampoo in a plastic free bar form from Lush. Don’t like the employee care standards in Amazon warehouses? You get my point.
  4. Vote with your heart. If you want to protect the NHS and save lives, get out on polling day and vote with your heart. You know what I’m saying.
  5. Be excellent to each other. We hear things like “How would you feel if that was your sister/mother/father/brother?” We don’t really need to have a familial connection to another person to empathise and do the right thing by them. We just need to practice. Let’s all just practice.

How are you counselling your clients to be brave and play in a more empathetic space? Do you think the world will spring back? Or do you think we’ll see a permanent shift towards kindness?

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Let’s talk about tension

We all think we know what tension is. It’s something that happens before you meet your partner’s parents for the first time, but that you hope will dissolve pretty quickly. It’s something that you get in you muscles when you’re stressed, and can give you a headache. It’s something that you need just the right amount of when you’re walking the tightrope.

But what’s it got to do with advertising?

Tension is something that all good stories have, or so I’ve been told. And advertising, so often, is storytelling. Drawing your audience in with emotion and characters, hoping that they become invested enough in what happens, that they stick with you.

Tension is also something I’ve heard people talk about within the strategic proposition. But more on that later.

Tension in storytelling

Anticipation. Excitement. High stakes.

Last chance saloon.

The roll of the dice.

Hold your breath and hope.

Tension is what keep us turning the page, and stops us from changing the channel.

It tells us something big is happening. And you’re going to want to see it.

Running through the airport. Will he reach her?

On again, off again. Will they get together?

No body believes him. Will he prove them all wrong?

The lean in before the kiss.

Tension in advertising

The Super Bowl ads are a great example of tension in advertising, least of all because in recent year’s they’ve started to drop teaser ads for the main ads. In order for the teaser to work, and actually tease, their has to be some unresolved tension. Enough anticipation to compel you to watch the real thing in the Super Bowl ad break.

Tension happens when something is pulled by opposite forces, and can manifest in many different ways:
– Uncertainty of the unknown
– Pushback against the norm
– Juxtaposition of what is vs. what could be
– A unique or remarkable opinion

The Start Up

So whether it’s in an advert, a brand, a Tweet, a movement, tension is all about the art of the possible.

We know all too well that we don’t want to live in the real world. And that brands don’t want to sell us real life. We want to believe the fairy stories. That miracles do happen. That we’ll get our three wishes. Be kissed by a Prince. Good overcomes evil.

Ideals are what gets noticed

To earn our attention, there needs to be tension
The tension of how it might turn out.
The tension of possibility.
The tension of change.
Telegrams used to charge by the word. Say what you need to say, there you go.
But stories… stories work because we’re not sure. We’re half there, half not.
This might work.
This might not work.
The tension of maybe.

Seth Godin

Tension in strategy

This is one I’ve heard on the grapevine. That’s seeped into my consciousness. And I’ve not made a note of it anywhere. And Google’s let me down.

But it makes sense.

A single minded proposition isn’t just about getting one key message across. It’s about being simple and compelling (that one came from my undergrad PR lecturer Dr Bill Nichols).

1,000 songs in your pocket.

Just do it.

Do you use tension when writing a proposition? How do you create tension in your work?

But what happens in the end?

Tension is all the build up, and whether the high stakes gamble will pay off. One thing that’s interested me recently is that in a world of skippable ads and short attention spans, the resolution gets put first, followed by the tension. This makes for less effective anticipation build, but it does stop people’s eyes glazing at 2s and clicking off to somewhere else.

And with all this talk of tension, I’m off to watch the season 4 finale of Grey’s Anatomy. Now if you’re interesting in building tension. Shonda Rhimes is an absolute master.

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Wicked solutions for wicked problems

Before today, I hadn’t heard of wicked problems.

Maybe I’m totally behind the times, but this one has just passed me by. I’m currently at a conference in Cornwall called Agile on the Beach, and have been getting a crash course on, amongst other things, design thinking.

I’ve always been interested in different ways of approaching a problem. Design thinking is one approach. Or should I say a range of related approaches that differ slightly depending on which business school you’re talking to.

According to Chris Archer-Brown, a wicked problem:

  • seems impossible.
  • is incomplete, in flux and difficult to define.
  • requires a deep understanding of the stakeholders involved.
  • requires an innovative approach.
  • is experienced differently be every person.
  • has a different ideal solution to ever person, and potentially no ideal solution at all.
  • impossible to know when it’s done.
  • is likely to cause more unintended problems as you try and solve it.

Simple, huh?

Do you have a wicked problem that you’d like to solve? Or that you have solved? How did you go about defining the problem? And what process did you/could you go through to find a solution?

Being in this beautiful part of the world, with its fresh sea air, and laid back lifestyle, really gets the braincells fired up. I must say a huge thank-you to Amber and Roxane and the team at Flexible Falmouth (Falmouth University) for making this meet up at the conference happen.

Being on a distance learning course has many advantages, but it has been so nice to spend time with people that I have been studying with for over a year now. And they are even more brilliant in real life than they are on a computer screen.

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Reboot in Safe Mode

Bear with me on this one, because it’s gonna get a little deep. This is an idea that I’ve just started exploring, and is way too big to get into in one blog post, so I may add more mini posts as I discover more.

We’ve all heard of psychological safety:

A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. It can be defined as “being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career” (Kahn 1990, p. 708). In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected.

Thanks Wikipedia. But what I’m really interested in is how a person’s state of safety changes the way they view, react to and respond to advertising.

I’m reading a book by Claire Wilson, called Grounded. It’s truly brilliant, put it at the top of your reading list. It focuses mainly on helping children feel safe, but it equally applies to adults.

There’s a sliding scale of emotive states from thrive through to freeze (through the familiar fight or flight states). We want to thrive, of course. This is the only state in which we can make decisions.

So, as a brand, we want to talk to people when they’re able to take in our message, digest the information, and make a decision. When they’re in thrive state: they’re safe.

So how can we make sure we’re talking to our audiences when they’re in this safe mode? And not in one of the other survival modes, where decision making, and many other core functions, are switched off to the world?

Or can we help reassure people: help to bring people back down the scale, away from survive mode and into thrive mode?

This famous David Ogilvy quote comes to mind. But what if, we’re not talking to consumers in the right headspace? What if they’re not making purchasing decisions in the right headspace? What if, we actually are the totally rational beings that economists dream us to be, but only when we’re in safe mode?

This book has sparked some interesting questions in my mind, and I hope to share more of these questions with you. And one day, maybe even some answers.

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Notes on strategy from people who know a helluva lot more than me

I’m a bit of an obsessive collector. If I grew up pre-screen-era then I would definitely be big into scrapbooking. Instead I’ve got rafts of links on Notes on my phone. I’ve got Pinterest boards. I’ve got WeCollect boards. I squirrel away information like there’s an internet ice-age coming. Here’s some of my favourite strategy moments from the last few months.

7 tips from self confessed adman Omer Azeem

The Almighty JWT Planning Handbook

Bow down and read the beautifully wonky typewritten text.

20 ways to become a better strategist from Doug Kleeman at Preacher

Read all about it here.

  1. Archive your media consumption
  2. Write your own textbook
  3. Go to a bar by yourself
  4. Meditate
  5. Set yourself back 40 years
  6. Make writing a practice
  7. Study shareholder reports
  8. Debunk your own opinions
  9. Follow creative visionaries like you follow sports teams, Beyonce or Game of Thrones
  10. Go for a walk
  11. Start an observation journal
  12. Get tactile
  13. Master the interview
  14. Write poetry
  15. Channel your inner comic
  16. Analyze the anatomy of stories
  17. Maintain logs
  18. Bourdain yourself
  19. Teach others
  20. Check-Out

Heed Dave Trott’s words. Always.

He says your briefs suck. And he’s not talking about your underwear. Probably. Some snippets from his article (but you should read the full thing):

  • The job of the brief is to change, to reframe, the problem.
  • Creativity is about solving a problem in a new way.
  • The origin of planning was to get upstream of the existing problem.
  • If we don’t have a problem we can’t be creative.
  • As Einstein said “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about the solution.
  • Because if he got the problem right the solution would be easy, but if he got the problem wrong there would be no solution.

And finally… it’s all just about human relationships really, isn’t it?

Big shoutout to Olivia de Recat for visualising this beauty.

What have you done recently to get better at what you do? Or to become who you want to be? Or to be who you want to be? I wrote this blog, that’s what I did.

Be brave. Feel stupid.

Short thoughts: don’t be the radio edit

Brands always want to be the CD version, the version you listen to on Spotify: perfected, honed, polished, buffed, recorded and recorded.

Instead, aim to be the Live version. The sweaty, jumping around, yelling at the audience in a grimey old venue with sticky floors version. The version that people can’t access instantly through the device in their pocket for peanuts. Easily won, easily forgotten.

Be the version people travel for, pay for, drag friends along to, rave about, experience. Be the version that changes people.

Be brave. Be stupid.